GTA IV now... gamers review

I still think it's an amazingly entertaining game, 35 hours in. I don't know what your complaint with the cover system is. To be honest, the cover system in GTA4 is better than various other games where shooting/cover is the primary aspect of the game! I won't name any at risk of offending Mazzle, though. Maybe all you need to do is learn how to use it better (aim at what you want to jump behind, and remember you can zoom in and target specific body parts).

As for 'drive to destination', you realise you can get a taxi to instantly warp you anywhere in the entire map, right? You just make a waypoint on your map or choose an existing one, and then hit one of the buttons (X on the PS3) in the taxi to go there instantly. It's much better than the systems in previous games.

GTA4 isn't a perfect game, but it is the best of its kind and does essentially everything better than its predecessors. Seeing as they were highly reviewed, and this is better than them, the only logical answer is to also give it great reviews. I do agree that it isn't 10/10 material, but the word 'sucks' couldn't be further than my mind when thinking about GTA4.

It's like I said after playing it just a handful of hours, there are 'down to the core" issues with this game in terms of game design that make it automatically fall outside of the 95+ range for me. It deserves a 90 score, not more than that. Those issues are:

- Fight system. While a huge improvement over the previous titles, it still feels weak in some firefights and situations

- Predictability. A true sandbox game gives you multiple ways to finish each mission. But since the game will flush out anything when it loads the mission, preventing your target from escaping by preemptively placing a truck on his parkway does not work. That utterly destroys the gaming experience, because the promise really is marketed to be " If you can think of something to do, you usually can". This also rings true when considering that there are no differences between a car you can blow up, and those you can't "because the mission has to end in a specific place so you can see that cutscene". After a while you realize that you can't even shoot the tail lights and proceed to just drive at a distance making the mission ever so boring until you drive in the right trigger.

- Checkpoint system. This probably is the very worst of issues. If I die during a 10 minutes long mission whose first 5 minutes were about driving my teammates in a stolen car, I do NOT want to do that part over again. Again, if after finishing an assassination mission, I die while escaping the cops, I should NOT have to play the mission again. I resurrect at the nearest hospital, but my target is STILL dead.

- Cheap workarounds around technical limitations. For some reason, this game gets away with so many technical flaws because "it's GTA, it does everything better than its competitors, and it's packed to the last byte of data of stuff to do". Well I'm sorry, but a game like GTA precisely because it's GTA should break boundaries by doing everything absolutely right, even at the cost of having less on the disc for us players to do. Don't cram everything in there for the sake of doing it if you can't pull it off at the same level as some of your other stuff in the game.

If it was any other game, and I mean even outside the sandbox genre, you'd get terrible reviews when you look at how buggy the game can become. It sometimes breaks the missions even (bank heist, some assassinations)

In the end, if you really want to give games scores, then I'll stir the old controversies back up and say that Zelda ocarina of time deserved its 98-100 score a lot more; and HL2 deserved its 96 score a lot more than GTAIV deserves its 99 one.

Thank god I'm not the only one!

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- Checkpoint system. This probably is the very worst of issues. If I die during a 10 minutes long mission whose first 5 minutes were about driving my teammates in a stolen car, I do NOT want to do that part over again. Again, if after finishing an assassination mission, I die while escaping the cops, I should NOT have to play the mission again. I resurrect at the nearest hospital, but my target is STILL dead.

So true.

It actually makes me drop the controller after 30 mins each time I play the game and do something else instead. I'm not sure why it is so frustrating in GTA 4, maybe it's just my attention span or patience that got much shorter since I played GTA 3 and Vice City. I do remember though that it's one of the things that made me stop playing San Andreas too (beside the fugly graphics...yea I was one of the people who didn't play it before it came on PC and gosh it looked awful but that's not the issue here). Such a complex game, environment and rich story to experience, but if 10% of the gameplay is action and 90% driving/walking to the same place multiple times I just get the feeling that I am wasting my time!

Best Game Ever.

END OF DISCUSSION!

I agree with what everyone has said so far, however. My biggest gripe is the auto-trageting system. It almost makes me wish I had waited to just get the PC version so I wouldn't have to worry about it.

The auto-save thing really pissed me off, too. I had to restart the last mission about 10 times(getting to the very end everytime I might add) and by the time I finally beat it I was so pissed at the game I wasn't even happy or relieved that it was over, I just turned the damn thing off and walked away.

Quote from Mazy

Best Game Ever.END OF DISCUSSION!

To be fair seir, it's obviously something a lot of people do consider entertainment or it wouldn't have won that record.

The vast majority of people absolutely love GTA4 and can look over its technical issues, which aren't really as numerous or as enjoyment impeding as you imply IMO. As I said, I'm still enjoying the game after 35 hours, and I know millions of other people are too.

Honestly, unless the 360 version is somehow much buggier than the PS3 version, it's not that bad. Its merits more than outweigh its negatives.

Well I did say the game was worth a 9/10 score Honestly, I've played it entirely and am not looking forward to go back to it, but that's also been the case with Vice City and San Andreas. I always was all about story telling and narrative, and this is precisely what I loved in this iteration. That's also why there are only a few games I'll go back to and play multiple times. Other than that, once a game is done it's very much like a movie I won't even try to get back to it for at least a couple years.

Quote from Furyo

Well I did say the game was worth a 9/10 score Honestly, I've played it entirely and am not looking forward to go back to it, but that's also been the case with Vice City and San Andreas. I always was all about story telling and narrative, and this is precisely what I loved in this iteration. That's also why there are only a few games I'll go back to and play multiple times. Other than that, once a game is done it's very much like a movie I won't even try to get back to it for at least a couple years.

I think, in the end, after having spent 40+ hours with it, the story is its biggest flaw. *runs for the hills*

That said, I still think it deserves the 10's; if of course we're considering a 10 as simply the best of its kind and not 'perfect'.

Having beaten the campaign, I really only have two complaints.. maybe two and a half.

1) The cover system will often force you to look at something you don't want to look at, and it seems you have to fight it for a while to go after your intended target. I turned off auto-aim pretty early, maybe it's less of an issue with auto-aim turned on. I still feel it could have used a few more weeks of tuning.

2) The Euphoria animation system looks great most of the time, but there will be times where you crash or get hit by a car on a mission, and the game is taking forever trying to make the animations look smooth, while you're screaming at the game to go faster. This happened to me a few times even trying to carjack someone with a gun, and he took so long the guy got away. On the final mission

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where you have to get on the motorcycle to chase whats-his-face, it took FOREVER to get on the motorcycle.

That was a handful of mission fails right there, nothing I could do about it.

2.5) That leads to my half-point, of the mission checkpoint system often does not always have progressive stages or consistent behavior. Sometimes it will have two or three checkpoint locations, other times it won't- forcing you to do the tedious driving missions over. Other times it will be inconsistent where you have a chance to stop by the weapons store on the way and get armor, other times it will take you right to the mission. If you try to leave and get armor, the mission will fail, and you will lose the checkpoint.

Overall, still an amazing game. Not a 10/10, maybe 9.0 - 9.5, every game has bugs, but the scope and quality of the game really makes up for the minor errors.

Quote from Erratic

I think, in the end, after having spent 40+ hours with it, the story is its biggest flaw. *runs for the hills*

That said, I still think it deserves the 10's; if of course we're considering a 10 as simply the best of its kind and not 'perfect'.

Wow the best of its kind is so unfair cause the other simmilar games are always considered as GTA wannabes and not given the light they may deserve...

UT3 was rated everywhere as very good but just more of the same, I was annoyed GTA didn't get the same reception

Quote from Ascard

I think, in the end, after having spent 40+ hours with it, the story is its biggest flaw. *runs for the hills*

That said, I still think it deserves the 10's; if of course we're considering a 10 as simply the best of its kind and not 'perfect'.

Wow the best of its kind is so unfair cause the other simmilar games are always considered as GTA wannabes and not given the light they may deserve...

UT3 was rated everywhere as very good but just more of the same, I was annoyed GTA didn't get the same reception

Review scores suck, but it seems the only fair way to generate them.

Come to think of it, reviews suck in general.

ahhh I expected to be flamed for refering 2 gta as anything but the grail